Elon Musk’s SpaceX Aces will conduct its third test flight with a spaceship on Thursday

The 120-meter-high Starship rocket, together with the Heavy booster, aims to help astronauts land on the moon during the manned Artemis 3 mission in 2026.

San Francisco: Billionaire Elon Musk’s SpaceX successfully launched the third test flight of its massive Starship vehicle on Thursday.

With winds wreaking havoc and delaying the launch by an hour, the flight took off at 9:25 a.m. EDT (6:55 IST) from SpaceX’s Starbase facility near Boca Chica Beach in south Texas.

“Launch of a spaceship!” the company wrote on X.com.

‘The spaceship has reached its orbital speed! Congratulations @SpaceX team!!” SpaceX founder Elon Musk added in a message.

This comes after two test flights that were only partially successful in April and November last year.

After the flights, SpaceX was grounded by the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).

On Wednesday, the agency cleared the third test flight, saying the company “met all safety, environmental, policy and financial responsibility requirements.”

“The third flight test is designed to build on what we’ve learned from previous flights while pursuing a number of ambitious goals, including successfully taking off on both stages, opening and closing Starship’s cargo door, a demonstration of propellant transfer during upper stage coast. phase, the first-ever restart of a Raptor engine in space, and a controlled reentry of Starship,” the company wrote in a mission statement on its website.

SpaceX noted that the third flight “will also follow a new trajectory, landing the Starship in the Indian Ocean.”

“This new flight path will allow us to try new techniques, such as burning engines in space, while maximizing public safety,” the report said.

The 120-meter-high Starship rocket, together with the Heavy booster, aims to help astronauts land on the moon during the manned Artemis 3 mission in 2026.